20 years of failure

I recently had a letter published about the ignoring of parking restrictions around my local School, Hartley Brook Academy.

Today I see an article in The Star about similar problems at Ballifield school and the actions of PCSO Reynolds who patrols the parking there.

He tells us that people say they are grateful to see him there. I doubt it was the people who park badly who are pleased to see him, more likely the people who are tearing their hair out at these parking problems day in day out.

Your article states that the previous day there were very few badly parked vehicles as a result of PC Reynolds and his team being there.

Well that’s hardly news is it? Who the heck is going to deliberately park badly while the PCSOs are there? Those who were caught were given a note saying “Please don’t park here again”. If they are caught again the PCSOs have a quiet word and tell people to pay attention.

Apparently people usually realise what they are doing wrong.

How polite, PCSOs will be handing out tea and biscuits next.

It’s ludicrous, the parkers already know what they are doing wrong, and they choose to do so. I bet that if he and his team weren’t there the next day, parking badly would have instantly resumed.

The last paragraph in the article about PCSO Reynolds summed it up.

The police have their own funding cuts to deal with, which we all accept, but the PCSO thinks that only regular parking patrols will ease the problem.

Well, perhaps if the police sent out someone empowered to issue parking tickets, randomly every couple of weeks to each school, people paying fines would get the message and stop parking badly and then the PCSOs could be put to better use and ease the pressure on the police budget.

PCSO Reynolds says he’s been doing the job for 20 years and parking around the schools has not got any better.

For all the effort put in, it’s 20 years of failure, or he wouldn’t still have to be doing it.